Mail service is a universally known and accepted practice throughout the world. Without question, communicating with mail will continue to be a necessary and critical part of everyone's life.
Before the advent of the electronic data exchange, Internet, and the World Wide Web (WWW), mail were typically delivered by transporting them to its destination. Although physically delivering mail is still very popular and widely used, many are now using the Internet and the WWW as an alternative to sending and receiving mail. Some advantages of using the Internet and the WWW are the reduced cost and the instantaneous access to mail. Partly because of these reasons, the use of electronic mail (email) has become an everyday practice in homes, businesses, and the like, and is generally known and accepted in the public.
On the average, a person receives hundreds, or perhaps thousands of bills every year, while a particular business can easily receive over a million bills in that same year. Along with the bills, a person/business may receive other types of mail such as personal letters, magazines, advertisements, accounts payable, invitations, etc.
As businesses grow and people become busier, managing mail, particularly bills can be a time consuming and burdensome process. For example, when a particular mail is received, one must open it and spend the necessary time reading it to determine its level of importance. Many other types of mail, such as advertisements or the like, are generally of very little importance, but one does not necessarily know this until the mail are opened and reviewed. After determining that the particular mail is a bill and is of high importance, the bill is usually set aside and not acted upon until a later date. When this later date arrives, the bill may not have been timely acted upon by the person depending on the memory and/or time constraints of the person. If the bill is not timely acted upon, a merchant will generally access a late fee and/or additional charges as a result of this delay. Even if the person can pay the bill on time, the person must spend the necessary time replying to it. For instance, the person must write out a check, balance the corresponding bank account, prepare the reply envelope, and send off the check along with the corresponding bill statement. When considering the large number of bills a person must reply to in a year, this traditional method is very time consuming and burdensome. Furthermore, the traditional method described above is also inefficient and can be costly.
The systems and methods currently available for managing mail/bills are an improvement in this field. For example, there are many businesses that are scanning paper mail into electronic format so that an employer/employee may access the mail from a remote location. This conventional method, however, do not provide a method for managing bills. Further, most systems and methods currently available that manage bills are believed to manage only electronic bills. Thus, there is a need for a system and method that can manage both electronic and paper formatted bills in a consistent manner. Accordingly, a more efficient and cost effective system and method for managing mail, in particular, bills is needed.